Woodbine Parish

Sir Woodbine Parish KCH (September 14, 1796, London—August 16, 1882, St. Leonards, Sussex) was a British diplomat, traveller and scientist.

Educated at Eton College, he took up his first diplomatic post in 1814, and was involved in events immediately following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. In 1815 he went with the expedition that restored the Kingdom of Naples to the House of Bourbon after the defeat of Joachim Murat, then returned to Paris as a secretary with Lord Castlereagh's embassy that drafted the 1815 Treaty of Paris.

He served as chargé d'affaires at Buenos Aires from 1825 to 1832. In this capacity, he signed the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation with Argentina on February 2, 1825, accompanying also official recognition by Great Britain of Argentinian independence.

With Joseph Barclay Pentland, Parish surveyed a large part of the Bolivian Andes between 1826 and 1827.

He served as Chief Commissioner at Naples from 1840 to 1845.

Parish combined his diplomatic work with scientific research, particularly geology and paleontology. In 1839 he published "Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata", an account of the geology of the Buenos Aires and Río de la Plata region and his findings of mammalian fossils, presenting Megatherium bones which were assembled and exhibited in the Natural History Museum, London. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, Geological Society and Royal Geographical Society, serving as vice-president of the latter. He corresponded with Charles Darwin. [ [http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-204.html Letter 204 — Darwin, C. R. to Henslow, J. S., 11 Apr 1833] , Darwin Correspondence Project, retrieved Dec 10 2007 ]

References

*Charles Parish, "Parish, Sir Woodbine (1796–1882)", rev. Malcolm Deas, "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21269 accessed 10 Dec 2007]
*es icon [http://www.todoeshistoria.com.ar/00010/parish.htm Todo es historia: Woodbine Parish y el Tratado de 1825]